HUSBAND COMES BACK

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 109, 18 February 1935, Page 8

HUSBAND COMES BACK

I STRANGE" BIGAMY CASE. Dramatic incidents were described at Manchester Assizes, lately when Mrs Mary Dearnaley, aged 57, of Southport, was convicted of bigamy. In 1896 aecrjsedi was married to William Henry Dearnaley at Christchurch, Ashton-under-Lyne, and they separated in 1914. The woman went to Barrow-in-Furness in 1915 to work on munitions and in 1917 she made the acquaintance of a fellow-employee, James Dale. He was single, and she accepted his proposal of marriage. The couple eventually went through a ceremony at Barrow register office in March, 1918. From then on until September last, stated counsel, prosecuting, the woman 1 and Dales appeared to have lived quite happily together, first at Blackpool and later at Southport. Recently Dale began to frequent public-houses, where he got to know a girl named Nellie Rowan. On October 6 he “married” Miss Rowan, although when he did so he believed himself to he legally married to Mrs Dearnaley. . Counsel mentioned a strange coincidence that happened after Dale and Rowan had gone through the ceremony. Dearnaley’s husband appeared on the scene, after a lapse of 20 years and his wife became alarmed. She went to Dale and told him she was a bigamist. He. replied that he was just going to give himself up to the police for being a bigamist. “As things have turned out, however,” added counsel, “Dale is not a bigamist at all now.” Dale, in the witness-box, admitted quite frankly that he was “soaked in whisky” when he “married” Miss Rowan. Dearnaley’s husband stated that the cause of' their separation in 1914 was his wife’s affection for one of their lodgers. 1 “When I got home at he gdded, “fire was out, wife was out, and the lodger v/as out.” Mrs Dearnaley was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment,